In Defense of Bernie Sanders

I’ve been seeing a lot of shade thrown at Bernie Sanders, including a lot of outright lies, and I figured I’d gather up some of the positives, and lay them down here, so that there’s a record of them in a place I can refer to; I’m tired of reciting them, and getting nasty incoherent comments in reply. I also think that, despite these genuine positives, Sanders sometimes is a poor judge of character, as we have seen in his recent endorsements, and the man is 84, and perhaps losing his touch. But I remember, I still see sometimes, his critics lying about him, and twisting everything positive said about the man into a reason to hate him. That’s reading the sources the way fundamentalists read the bible, and the only possible result of such readings is to reinforce the readers’ biases. So I’ve gathered these up for people who haven’t seen some of them, and so I have a record for my own use.

AIPAC Does Not Make US Israeli Policy

[This was directed to someone who has bought into several antisemitic conspiracy theories. I fear I have lost her; this sort of thinking takes over people's minds.]

The Flapping of Butterfly Wings, July 28

There's some victim blaming going here. The party that failed to stop fascism partly failed to stop fascism because people tried very hard to keep it from stopping fascism. The Democrats have not had a substantial Congressional majority since, I think, the year 2000. If the voters wanted to vote out the Republicans--and remember, the Republicans stole the 2000 Presidential election--they could have done so at any time. We have Republican dominance because people voted for them. We can argue over why; generally I think racism and sexism, emerging in reaction to the successes of women's rights and Black rights in the 1960s handed the control of the country to racist misogynist reactionaries, who are now repeating the mistakes of the First Gilded Age, with added environmental and foreign policy mistakes.

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Marxist Speculations on the Vibecession

🎶 Marat we’re poor, and the poor stay poor / Marat don’t make us wait any more / We want our rights, and we don’t care how! / We want a revolution…now!—Marat/Sade

There is a long-standing discussion of why it was that the 2024 US public believed that the economy was poor when in fact it was the envy of the world, people at the lowest income levels were making gains, and the labor market was the best in a generation.

Slavery and the Wheel

Two notes to critics of the United States on why the founding of the United States was such a radical break, despite all flaws, with a few notes on the broader historical context.

“Small wheel turning by the fire and rod
Big wheel turning by the grace of God
Every time that wheel turn round
Bound to cover just a little more ground”
The Wheel

"AI:" Draining the Wellsprings

In last Wednesday's Richardson/Krugman discussion, extractive industries and "AI" were touched on briefly and I got to thinking about "AI." It is extractive, and what it extracts is culture. It seems that through the miracles of modern technology, the very rich have found a way to drain the wellsprings of culture.

The Flapping of Butterfly Wings: July 11

Various Bluesky remarks I wish to preserve